Interview of the Vice President by Richard Wolffe, Newsweek Magazine
The Vice President's West Wing Office

Q Let's start with Iraq, if I may. There's a lot of skepticism
on the Hill, even inside the administration about the Iraqi Prime
Minister's abilities, desire to take down the militias. Some people
have said the militias have put him into power, so why would he take
them down or want to take them down. So what gives you the confidence
to think that he can actually be up to the job?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think we've got a lot of people who
want to judge the success of the Maliki administration after some nine
months in office. I think it's a little premature. I think he has been
direct and forthright in responding to our concerns. I think there is
some evidence that he's already beginning to act in terms of, for
example, Iraqi forces rounding up as many as 600 members of the Jaish al
Mahdi in the last couple of weeks. His commitment to us is to go after
those who are responsible for the violence, whoever they may be --
whether they're Baathist or former regime elements or militia, Shia
militia or criminal elements. And I think at this stage, we don't have
any reason to doubt him.

Q You don't think it's a token gesture?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think it's -- people are trying to make a
judgment on whether or not this plan is going to work I think far too
early. And I think in fairness to the Iraqis, they need to be given an
opportunity to follow through on their commitments.

Q The President and I think you also have spoken about the
possibility of regional war in case of American withdrawal, a chaos in
Iraq, and I think the President referred to it as an epic battle between
extremists. What's the basis for thinking that it would be a broader
war? What lies behind that kind of analysis in your mind?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it's a concern that the current
level of sectarian violence -- Shia on Sunni and Sunni on Shia violence
would increase, and perhaps break out in other parts of the country.
It's pretty well concentrated right now in the Baghdad area.

There are a lot of other concerns, as well, with what would happen
if we were to withdraw from Iraq and do what many in the Democratic
Party want us to do. It clearly would have, I think, consequences on a
regional basis in terms of the efforts that we've mounted not only in
Iraq, but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This is a
conflict that we're involved in on a wide variety of fronts in that part
of the world. And hundreds of thousands of people literally have signed
on in that battle to take on the al Qaeda or the al Qaeda types, in part
because the United States is there, because we're committed, because we
provide the leadership, and because we're working closely with people
like President Musharraf in Pakistan, and Karzai in Afghanistan and so
forth.

And a decision by the United States to withdraw from Iraq I think
would have a direct negative impact on the efforts of all of those other
folks who would say wait a minute, if the United States isn't willing to
complete the task in Iraq that they may have to reconsider whether or
not they're willing to put their lives on the line serving in the
security forces in Afghanistan, for example, or taking important
political positions in Afghanistan, or the work that the Saudis have
done against the al Qaeda inside the kingdom.

All of a sudden, the United States which is the bulwark of security
in that part of world would I think no longer -- could no longer be
counted on by our friends and allies that have put so much into this
struggle.

Q But would that encourage them to take a role in an Iraqi civil
war? There's this idea that regional powers would step in.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, I think -- I think when you look at Iraq,
you have to look at Iraq in the broader context. And you cannot
evaluate the consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq only in terms
of Iraq. You've got to look at it in terms of what it means in other
parts of the globe, really.

Remember what the strategy is here for al Qaeda. Their strategy is
that they can break our will. They can't beat us in a stand-up fight.
They never have -- but they believe firmly because they talk about it
all the time -- that they can, in fact, break the will of the American
people and change our policies if they just kill enough Americans, or
kill enough innocent civilians.

And they cite Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993 as evidence of
that, and then they see the debate here in the United States over
whether or not we've got the right policy in Iraq, whether or not we
ought to stay committed there as evidence reinforcing their view that,
in fact, the United States can be forced to withdraw if they simply stay
the course that they're on, that is to say the al Qaeda and the
terrorist extremists stay the course that they're on.

So Iraq to some extent is a test of that basic fundamental
proposition. Is their strategic view that we won't complete the job
correct? Or is our strategic view correct, that we can, in fact,
organize people in that part of the world, as well as use our forces in
order to achieve a significant victory and defeat those elements that,
among other things launched an attack on the United States on 9/11 and
killed 3,000 Americans.

Q You've made the case that a collapsed Iraq would become a
terrorist haven. The President has also said that. Al Qaeda is
essentially --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Look at what happened to Afghanistan.

Q But al Qaeda is essentially a new organization in Iraq, a
Sunni organization and it has this element of foreign fighters. Isn't
there a reason to think that if there was full-blown civil war, the Shia
would essentially beat them and neutralize that as being a hostile force
as they take control of the country?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: What's the basis for that?

Q There are more Shia.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, let's look at Afghanistan. In 1996,
there were no al Qaeda in Afghanistan. That's when bin Laden moved in
and found refuge there. A handful of Arabs, foreign fighters, if you
will, subsequently opened up training camps, trained somewhere --
estimates range from 10,000 to 20,000 terrorists in the late '90s,
developed a safe haven and a base of operations from which they blew up
American embassies in East Africa, attacked the USS Cole, launched the
planning and training for 9/11. That all took place in Afghanistan
under circumstances that are similar to what you've just hypothesized
about for Iraq.

Q Okay. Can we talk about Iran? You've traveled the region,
you have extensive contact especially in the Gulf, the Saudis, what are
you hearing about their concerns about Iran's rise, its role in the
region now?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I think there's widespread concern throughout
the region about Iran, and in particular, Iran under Ahmadinejad. I
think a lot of people in the area -- I don't want to attribute this to
any one particular government -- but a lot of people in the area feel
directly threatened. They're concerned about Iran using surrogates such
as the Syrians and Hezbollah, for example, in an effort to topple the
government of Lebanon. They're concerned about Iran working through
Hamas to prevent any progress of the peace process vis-a-vis Israel.
They are concerned about sort of a struggle for leadership of the
Islamic world between Shia and Iran and Sunnis elsewhere. They're
concerned about Iran's drive to acquire nuclear weapons. And of course,
there's a long history of Iran trying to asset itself as the dominant
power in the region. It has been a theme that you can find running back
several decades.

And one of the unique things I find now as I talk to
representatives of governments from the region is they're all pretty
much in agreement on that proposition -- greater agreement if you will
among the folks in the region than I can recall on most other
propositions in recent years.

Q Is there a concern from those allies that America is too tied
down, too overwhelmed with the situation in Iraq to deal or have the
capacity to deal with Iran?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I haven't seen that. I think most of the
nations in that part of the world believe their security is supported,
if you will, by the United States. They want us to have a major
presence there. When we -- as the President did, for example, recently
-- deploy another aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf, that sends a
very strong signal to everybody in the region that the United States is
here to stay, that we clearly have significant capabilities, and that we
are working with friends and allies as well as the international
organizations to deal with the Iranian threat.

Q That deployment I suppose raised another round of speculation
inside Washington that military action was being worked on, that
something was around the corner, can you see a scenario where air
strikes on Iran would be justified?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to speculate about --

Q It's my job.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- security action. You've got to ask, but
the fact is we are doing what we can to try to resolve issues such as
the nuclear question diplomatically through the United Nations, but
we've also made it clear that we haven't taken any options off the
table.

Q Can we switch to some politics right now? Politics of Iraq,
especially. There has been little open support for the President's plan
for extra troops in Iraq from the Republican Party. John Warner has
obviously come out fairly strongly against it. Do you worry that the
party has lost the stomach for the fight?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think -- my sense of it is that the
election results last November obviously represented a blow to our
friends on the Hill, Republicans on the Hill -- to go from majority to
minority status. I think a lot of members were concerned or felt that
their political fortunes were adversely affected by our ongoing
operations in Iraq.

My sense of it is that what's happened here now over the last few
weeks is that the President has shored up his position with the speech
he made a couple of weeks ago, specifically on Iraq. And I think the
speech, frankly Tuesday night, the State of the Union address was one of
his best. I think there's been a very positive reaction of people who
saw the speech. And I think to some extent that's helped shore us up
inside the party on the Hill.

Now, we haven't had a lot of votes yet. The one vote that we've
seen was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday where -- with
the exception of Chuck Hagel -- the Republicans were united in opposing
what Biden and Levin and so forth were suggesting. So I think at this
stage, that most members on our side of the aisle recognize that what's
ultimately going to count here isn't sort of all the hoorah that
surrounds these proposals so much as it's what happens on the ground in
Iraq. And we're not going to know that for a while yet.

We've got a very good man in Dave Petraeus going out to take
command and I think a credible program. And the ultimate test will be
how well it works.

Q Senator Hagel said some pretty harsh things about the
administration yesterday. He said, there was no strategy. He said --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's not the first time.

Q Well, he said it was a -- the "ping-pong game with human
beings." Do you have a reaction to that kind of comment?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I thought that Joe Lieberman's comments two
days ago before -- it was when the Armed Services Committee had General
Petraeus up for his confirmation hearings were very important. And Joe
basically said that the plan deserved an opportunity to succeed that --
I think this was Joe, if it wasn't Joe, one of the other members did --
that we're sending General Petraeus out with probably a unanimous or
near unanimous vote, and that it didn't make sense for Congress to
simultaneously then pass a resolution disapproving of the strategy in
Iraq.

There are consequences of what Congress does under these
circumstances. And I thought Joe was effective in pointing out some of
those consequences, both from the standpoint of our people who are
putting their lives on the line and for the nation, as well as
consequences from the standpoint of our adversaries.

Q So you don't think Senator Hagel -- and now you dodged
completely responding to his comments -- but they're not helpful to the
cause and to the mission?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's
11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. But
it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is
involved.

Q May I ask about public opinion here because a series of -- a
succession of polls have shown this low level of support for the war,
for the President's new plan, looking back, you made some comments
before the war talking about being greeted as liberators. You weren't
the only one. And of course, the early part of the invasion did go
better than people expected. But do you think that people weren't
sufficiently prepared, public opinion wasn't sufficiently prepared for
the length of this conflict, for the difficulties involved? And do you
have any regrets about your own role in preparing public opinion for
that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we -- the comments I made were based on
the best information we had. I think there's no question but what the
struggle has gone on longer than we anticipated, especially in Baghdad,
that the events such as the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra a year
ago was a deliberate al Qaeda strategy that Zarqawi pursued, and it
worked. He finally provoked the Shia to retaliate against the Sunni.
Things like that, that have I think constituted setbacks.

It does not, though, lead me to conclude that what we're doing in
terms of our overall effort, taking down Saddam Hussein's regime
standing up a new democracy in Iraq isn't a worthy objective. I think
it is. I think we have made significant progress. There's still a lot
more to do -- no question about it.

But I guess, the other sense I have that the conflict we're
involved in -- not just Iraq but on the broader basis against al Qaeda,
against the threat that's represented by the extreme elements of Islam
on a global basis now is going to go on for a long time. And it's not
something that's going to end decisively, and there's not going to be a
day when we can say, there, now we have a treaty, problem solved. It's
a problem that I think will occupy our successors maybe for two or three
or four administrations to come.

It is an existential conflict. It is, in fact, about the future of
civilization on large parts of the globe, in terms of what's represented
by al Qaeda and their associates. And it's very important that we
recognize it's a long-term conflict, and we have to be engaged. There
might have been a time when we could retreat behind our oceans and feel
safe and secure and not worry about what was happening in other parts of
the globe. But that day passed on 9/11.

And now, when we face the very real prospect that attacks can be
mounted against the United States from various parts of the globe,
including Europe -- remember, the last threat was out of the U.K. with
airliners to be blown up over the Atlantic -- and where the possibility
exists that the terrorists could next time have far deadlier weapons
than anything they have used to date, this is a very serious problem.
And the United States cannot afford not to prevail.

Q The question about the run-up to war, the weapons of mass
destruction, do you feel that, in making -- do you feel that your
credibility was hurt by that, and that, in a sense, no matter what the
warnings are about this broader conflict, that, in some ways, getting
beyond the run-up to the war and the eternal debate about the run-up to
war, means it's harder to make the case about the broader threats now?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I have my own personal view. Obviously
there was flawed intelligence prior to the war. We've seen reports from
the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Robb-Silberman commission and
so forth -- but that we should not let the fact of past problems in that
area lead us to ignore the threat we face today and in the future. It
would be a huge mistake.

And the -- in terms of whether or not it adversely affected public
opinion, I think it clearly did, but that does not lead me to conclude
that we didn't do the right thing when we went into Iraq and took down
Saddam Hussein's regime, et cetera.

Q The media has this -- if not the media, public opinion has
this caricature of you, the Darth Vader in the bat cave, and various
things. You must be very familiar with that. Do you think you get a
fair crack from the media?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, I don't worry about it a lot. I'm at that
stage in my life where I'm not running for any office. I'm here to do a
job for the President of the United States. It's important that I tell
people what I think -- and I do. And from the standpoint of the
decisions the President makes and the way we try to conduct business, we
don't worry a lot about the polls, what they say about us --

Q Or the newspapers?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: -- or the newspapers. If you've been around --
by the time I leave here, it will have been over 40 years since I
arrived in Washington, and I've been praised when I didn't deserve it,
and probably criticized when I didn't deserve it. And there aren't
enough hours in the day for me to spend a lot of time worrying about my
image.

Q Let me ask you about events going on at the courthouse down --
not far from here. We think it's fairly unprecedented that a sitting
Vice President would testify --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not going to talk about the trial,
obviously.

Q About your decision to testify, about the precedent?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sorry, I'm not going to discuss it.

Q Had to ask. I just want to end -- because we're running short
of time -- President Ford, his recent funeral, did it put you in a
reflective mood about that period? Do you draw any parallels to now?
What was the sort of overwhelming feeling as you thought about then and
now, going through all the private and public moments surrounding the
funeral?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I did think about, obviously, the
President a lot as we went through that, really, week-long period of
national mourning. I was, like I think a lot of us who were close to
him and worked for him and are part of this administration, delighted to
see the outpouring of tributes to his leadership, to what he represented
to the country under very difficult circumstances, and praise for the
tough, tough decisions he made -- in particular, for example, the
pardon.

And I reflected back on where we'd been 30 years ago when, after he
made those decisions and, obviously, suffered for it in the public
opinion polls and the press, and how history judged him 30 years later
very, very favorably because of what he'd done and because he had
displayed those qualities of leadership and decisiveness, steadfastness,
if you will, in the face of political opposition that became a hallmark
of his administration.

Q Is there a parallel to now?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There may well be.

Q One other question. Bob Woodward reported that President Ford
thought you had justified the war wrongly, and that he agreed with Colin
Powell that you developed a fever, I think was the word, about Saddam
Hussein, about terrorism. Did you feel that was accurate? Did it
surprise you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've never heard that from anybody but Bob
Woodward.

Q And other comments that -- criticism from Scowcroft about not
knowing you anymore -- people have got quite personal, people you worked
with before. You wouldn't be human if it didn't have some reaction.